Liberal Arts Services

Fall 2006

LAS 324L • ANTHROPOLOGY OF SEX AND SEXUALITY

Unique

Days

Time

Location

Instructor

41200

TTh

12:30 PM-2:00 PM

WAG 101

ALLEN

Course Description

Sexuality was "re-discovered" (Vance) by anthropologists in the 1980's, compelled by the HIV disease epidemic, and responding to literary theory based work in queer studies, which lacked ethnographic grounding. This course seeks to provide for undergraduates an engagement with major methodological, ethical and theoretical problems with which foundational, emerging and marginal texts in the sub-field grapple, or represent.
A short critical/reaction paper incorporating literature and lectures will be required for each thematic module, which again, will invert the usual pedagogical practice of ending the semester with the marginal or minority view; preferring to start there, in an elliptical investigation. This course will critically engage canonical and marginal texts and their conditions of research and writing, asking after the various ways in which work is received as, for example, anthropology, sexuality studies, performance studies, gender studies or something else.